LITTLE ROCK (AP) — After the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, black leaders in Arkansas wanted to memorialize the slain civil rights leader on the steps of the state Capitol. More importantly, they wanted the governor to join them.

Gathered Wednesday at the spot of that memorial service for King 44 years ago, some of those same leaders hailed then-Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller’s courage to stand with them that day as a major step for race relations in a state that had been torn over school desegregation a decade earlier.

“We were going to do it, whether the governor chose to be a part of it or not,” said William “Sonny” Walker, a former director of economic opportunity under Rockefeller. “But the fact that the governor chose to be a part of the initiative made it all the more significant.”

Hundreds gathered at the state Capitol to re-enact the April 7, 1968 ceremony and commemorate King’s assassination. They also celebrated Rockefeller, the only southern governor to hold a public memorial for King following his assassination in nearby Memphis.

The ceremony, organized by the state’s Martin Luther King Commission, was part of a series of events to mark what would have been Rockefeller’s 100th birthday. Rockefeller, the state’s first Republican governor in Arkansas since Reconstruction, died in 1973.

Walker recalled that Rockefeller’s aides were reluctant about the governor taking part in the public memorial service, especially in a state had been split over the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock Central High School.

“Our leader was gone, but we were also proud that our governor was the only governor that stood on the steps and shook hands with us, held hands with us and sang ‘We Shall Overcome,”’ he said. “We thought that bode well for Arkansas, and we were proud.”

Walker was joined by legislators and dignitaries such as Lt. Gov. Mark Darr, U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin and former governors Dale Bumpers and Jim Guy Tucker during the two-hour event.

Tucker, who headed up a Young Democrats for Rockefeller group in 1964, drew parallels between the governor and the civil rights leader.

“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Winthrop Rockefeller helped move the needle of our humanity and in our public policies to a higher level in this state and in this nation,” Tucker said.

William Rockefeller, the late governor’s 25-year-old grandson and son of the late Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller, recited the speech his grandfather gave on the Capitol steps four decades earlier.

“That was one of the earliest stories I heard about my grandfather, him delivering that speech at the memorial, and for me to have the opportunity to deliver it and kind of follow in his footsteps in that way is a really humbling honor,” he said.